Songs of the Shenandoah

by Michael K. Reynolds

  “You mean before or after I decided to leap the fence?” Davin reached down and felt his ankle. “Not my most brilliant decision.”

  She flipped the red hair back that had fallen down her forehead. “Well . . . we should get you back and I’ll take a look at it more closely. But first, I did have a question for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” She eyed him with curiosity. “I was wondering, how many boots can you buy for fifty dollars?”

  He smiled, nodded, and they started to walk back. “I suppose quite a few.”

  “And . . . I wonder how much it would cost someone to purchase boots for, say, an entire regiment?”

  Davin learned there was no sense being coy around Muriel. She was too smart. The only way to speak to her was plainly. “Probably all a person had.”

  “All?”

  “Everyone needs to have a cause, right?”

  “Davin?” Muriel wrinkled her lip.

  What now? Was she going to get deep and mysterious again? Couldn’t she just celebrate the boots for a day? “Yes?”

  “I like you.”

  He started breathing again. “Is that so?”

  “Very much.” She lowered her head and spoke in a whisper. “And I know you like me as well.”

  Who was being presumptuous now? But she was right.

  She stopped and faced him. “But I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this.”

  “We can be careful, so no one will know. For that matter, we shouldn’t walk back to camp together.”

  “Davin. Davin. You’re not hearing me. I don’t want to like you.” She raised her arms. “I don’t want to like anyone. It’s difficult to explain. And I can’t explain it. But let’s just say I have a serious responsibility out here, in this war, and I can’t let anything or anyone allow me to be distracted. Even a charming young man.”

  “Don’t say that.” He started to reach a hand toward her face, but she pulled back.

  “You don’t know me. Trust me on that.” She glanced around. “I don’t want you to get hurt. You should find someone who . . . who can love you.”

  “Why must things be so difficult with you?”

  “I can’t risk this. Any of this. My work here is too important. Nurse Meldrickson is quite clever. In fact, it’s foolish for me to tarry.”

  “So what if she catches you? What if you get sent home?”

  “You don’t understand.” She kicked her foot in the dirt. “What I do here. It matters. I don’t want to go home. And there isn’t anyone, yourself included, who is worth the chance of this happening.”

  The muscles in his face tightened. Was her cause this important? Important enough to live her life alone? “I understand.” Davin glanced up, unable to look directly in her eyes. “I won’t bother you anymore.”

  “You don’t need to say it that way, Davin.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re right. I am sorry. These soldiers need you. It’s selfish of me . . . of both of us, to let our feelings for each other get in the way.”

  “Then you’ll understand when I tell you that we should not speak again.”

  “Yes.”

  Muriel surprised him by leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. Then she turned and scampered back toward the camp.

  What was that? What did it mean? Did she speak and act in code? What a strange woman. Maybe she was right. He needed to leave her alone to her cause and he could be alone on his own journey of redemption.

  The war was no place for love.

  A shout rang out in the distance, and he sought to find its source somewhere in the woods. Probably just some sentries.

  Then he thought of Seamus. Where was his brother? Would they face each other soon, at the point of a musket?

  The banks of the Rappahannock were not far away from where he was standing. And on the other side were rebel forces. Probably tens of thousands. A breeze stirred up and he shuddered.

  For some reason he knew it.

  Seamus was on the other side of the river.

  Chapter 30

  The Passage

  Chancellorsville, Virginia

  Confederate Camp

  April 1863

  “How do you do it, Seamus?” Chaplain Scripps was sitting in a chair outside the hospital tent, a metal flask in his hands.

  His tired and unshaven friend startled Seamus who was on his patient visitation rounds and had his head down and his hands in his black wool coat pockets to protect against the chill.

  “I tried going in there. A few times.” Scripps lifted the container to his lips and tilted it all of the way up, then wiped his gray whiskered chin with the back of his hand.

  At first Seamus was irritated by the interruption. It was already dark and he had many more of the injured to visit. But he took a deep breath, exhaled, and then sat in the empty chair beside his friend. He had learned in his service as chaplain that his most important responsibility was availability. God did the most amazing things through him when he allowed himself to be interrupted.

  “And look at you, my friend.” Scripps voice drawled with both the South and the booze. “The master comes to the student for advice.” He looked down at the tin in his hand. “And look at me.”

  “Have you seen about getting some leave?” For several months, Seamus had noted a deterioration in Scripps’s ability to serve as minister, and now he was of little use to any of the men. In fact, he was becoming a detriment to the faith of those who listened to his rambling.

  “Leave this? How could I ever leave any of this? This paradise?”

  Seamus refrained from responding. He had learned not to fill in the silence of conversations he had with men, as it got in the way of his most important assignment, which was listening.

  Scripps crossed his arms and leaned back. “I mean, you see it all. The gore. The piles of limbs. The desperate gaggle of breath fighting through pools of blood in the lungs. Looking into the faces of these boys . . . telling them everything is going to be all right when we know none of it will be. None of it.” He shook his head and flung his flask onto the ground.

  They sat quietly for a while, though from where they were sitting, they could hear the groans from inside the tent. Scripps covered his ears with his hands. “Can’t get away, from any of this. So . . . hopeless.”

  “There is always hope.”

  “Where? Where Seamus?”

  “General Lee has been—”

  “What? We lose five thousand; they lose five thousand. We step onto new blood-moistened grass and we declare victory. What for?”

  Seamus wished an answer would come to mind, but he couldn’t find the proper words to respond. He had long given up on determining who was right and who was wrong in this war. Seamus had seen enough atrocities on both sides to know that few would survive this war without deep scarring on their consciences. The mission had long since been buried by the pride and ambition of men.

  He also knew he was fighting for the wrong side. So why was he here? These questions were too painful to ask. But again, he had a strong sense of purpose, one that was beyond explanation. In all of the horror, he had seen the hand of God at work.

  “Robert.”

  “What?” Scripps spat on the ground.

  “You asked how I do it.”

  “Yes. Please. Tell me why you’ve endeared yourself to all of the soldiers. The officers. The horses. If they are going to die, they all want to meet with the great Reverend Seamus Hanley. When they see me coming. I see the disappointment in their eyes.”

  “That’s not true at all,” Seamus said, though the words stunk as lies as soon as they left his mouth. He scurried to come up with something to defuse the obvious. “Perhaps, I carry with me a spirit of forgiveness . . . only because I’m in such desperate need of it myself.”
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  “Forgiveness? Ha! What is possible to forgive with all of this? Don’t you know what this is all about? We’re getting to experience hell, right here on earth. To escape it? Or to prepare us for it?”

  The statement was so dark and onerous, Seamus didn’t know how to defuse it. Was there some truth in it as well? “It is all so difficult. Confusing.” He thought of something. “I do have a secret. One I use. Maybe it will help you. I think of all of these boys as my own sons.”

  Scripps’s brow wrinkled. “You have your own family.” He leaned forward. “What about that, Seamus? Your wife. Your daughter. When is the last time you’ve seen them? Wrote to them?”

  This caught him off of his flank. Seamus was used to asking the questions. He went to protest but paused. “Yes. You’re right.” He looked around and saw the flickering of many fires in the campground. “I don’t know why. Why I haven’t corresponded.”

  Scripps wagged his finger. “I tell you, son. It’s because they wouldn’t understand. You can either tell them the truth about all of this, and frighten them. Or you can mislead them. So what you do instead is you make a new family. Your brothers. And all of you preparing the way for the furnaces that lie ahead. There is no good in any of this, Seamus. Is there anything clearer than this?”

  Was this true? Had Seamus been fooling himself all of the while? That he was serving some type of divine purpose? Perhaps he was lost again, just drifting in a new wilderness of his own making. Why had he stopped writing to Ashlyn? Had he abandoned his own family while on some new quest of his own imagination?

  He wanted to help his friend, but Seamus didn’t have the right words to say, and others were expecting to see him. He patted Scripps on the shoulder. “I best be going . . .”

  “Yes. Nice talking to you, Preacher.”

  Seamus stood. “We’ll talk. Later.” He entered the hospital tent, almost relieved to escape the darkness of his friend’s demeanor, but this brief reprieve was instantly met with the foulness of the odor. Eight beds were in the lantern-lit tent, and each was filled with soldiers who had been injured in a skirmish today at the outskirts of camp.

  A doctor sitting at the side of one of the patients waved him over and stood to offer his chair. His face was grim and exhausted, but he seemed to try to infuse some fervency in his voice. “Chaplain Hanley. The private here has been expecting you.”

  “Is he here? Is the pastor here?” The weak sound came from the patient’s mouth, whose eyes were wrapped in cloth stained with spatters of blood.

  Out of sight of the boy, the doctor shook his head. Seamus had witnessed this silent language so many times before. It meant the young man would not be alive much longer. Probably wouldn’t make it through the night.

  Seamus put his hand on the exhausted doctor’s shoulder and the man moved on to care for other patients.

  “It’s me, son.” Seamus sat on the stool and clasped the soldier’s hand. “What do they call you?”

  The boy’s lips curled into a smile. “Ah, I am so glad you came.”

  “Of course I came. What’s your name, son?”

  “Dawson. My name is Dawson, Reverend Hanley.”

  “Well, I’m here now. What shall we talk about?” Was he really here? The words shared by Scripps were boring wormholes into his faith. Am I a fraud in wearing this collar?

  “I ain’t never done it before.” There was a wheezing in the boy’s voice, the familiar rattle of encroaching death.

  “What, son?”

  “Pray. I mean. Sure I say words while others listen and watch me. But it wasn’t even as if I was speaking to no one. Just words, you know.”

  Seamus did know. “What would you like to pray about? I’ll pray with you.”

  The boy adjusted in his bed and winced. “That’s what they say.”

  “Who? What do they say?”

  “That you talk to God.”

  The boy’s hand grew weaker in his grasp. “I do speak with God, it’s true enough. That’s all prayer is, son. I talk with Him all of the time. It’s the listening I have a stumble with. That’s the other part of prayer I’m still working on.”

  “What does He say?”

  “God?” Seamus began to wonder who was ministering to whom. He tried to hide back the laugh the boy might not understand. “Well. Just a little while ago, He told me I need to write my wife.”

  “He did?” Dawson coughed, and it sounded like gurgling. “My mama. I ain’t write Mama none neither. Why is that?”

  Was he wrestling with God himself? “I don’t know. I suppose it’s our way of trying to protect them from all of this. Maybe it’s because we don’t know how to explain this war. These battles. Even to ourselves.”

  “Reverend Hanley?” The tone was now soft and fading.

  “Son. Let’s pray. Now.” He was losing the boy.

  “Mama?”

  “What should I tell her, Dawson?” He squeezed the boy’s hand.

  “Tell her.” He smiled dimly. “Tell Mama you learned me how to talk to God.”

  “Doctor.” Seamus nodded the man toward the bed. He crossed Dawson’s hands on his chest.

  The doctor reached over and pressed his finger on Dawson’s neck. It won’t be long, he mouthed the words. Seamus held the boy’s hand as he fell to sleep.

  “Seamus.”

  Turning around, Seamus saw Scripps leaning inside, curling a finger at him. Was he drunk?

  In a moment, Seamus was outside again in the crisp air, and the smell of wood burning filled his nostrils. “What is it? I’ve still got more boys to visit.”

  “You’ve been summoned . . . by . . . the general.”

  “What general?”

  “The general.”

  “General Lee?”

  “Not that general. You aren’t that important. No. It’s Stonewall.”

  Seamus’s heart jumped. “General Jackson?”

  “Yes.” Scripps seemed agitated. “That one.”

  “What could he want with the likes of me?” Seamus had spent time with many of the officers of the camp, but General Jackson had an inner circle of which Seamus had never been included.

  Scripps gripped him by the arm and walked him away from the tent. He still had alcohol on his breath, but this news seemed to have sobered him up. “Captain Ross was the one who brought the news. When I pressed him on it, he said he didn’t know but noticed that the request came right after he was visited by Colonel . . . what’s his name?”

  Seamus’s shoulders sunk. “Colonel Percy Barlow.”

  “Yes. Isn’t he the one—?”

  “It is. The one I got in a scuffle with.”

  “But that was so long ago. If he was going to say something about that, it would have been many months back. Besides, I’ll tell them myself he had it coming.”

  Could it have been about that? No. Seamus knew this day was coming. When his past would catch up with him. He knew his role as a defector in the Mexican War would haunt him. Up to now, no one had ever called him on it. No one even seemed to care. But Percy had this on him all along. “When am I required to show?”

  “The captain said in an hour. General Jackson was meeting with General Lee and wanted to see you next.”

  “Which means I have about forty minutes or so left.”

  “What are you going to do? Do you need a map?”

  Seamus laughed. “I am not going to run away. Not this time.”

  “They’ll hang you. Or shoot you. Or just to save bullets, they may just run you through.”

  “They aren’t going to be hanging me.” As he said this, Seamus was trying to convince himself of this as well. Percy had tried before to see him hung. Seamus was convinced now that the man would never stop until he was successful in tightening the rope around Seamus’s neck.

  “Well then, if you aren’t going
to run, you better start preparing what you’re going to say. You got to think through all of it. We’ve got to think through all of it. I mean, you’re all I have left to remind me of why I’m here. I can’t lose you.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes,” Seamus said. “I need time to think. Alone, my friend.”

  “Oh.” Scripps nodded. Then for a moment, he became the mentor again. “You’re a fine man, Seamus. A fine man of God. It will be all right. I know it will. And I’ll be praying.”

  “That would most welcome.” He held out a hand to shake, but Scripps pulled him in with both arms and hugged him tightly. Would this be the last time Seamus saw the man?

  They parted and Seamus hurried to his tent. There was little more than a half hour remaining, and he was desperate to seek counsel through prayer. With his pulse rising, he hurried over to the edge of camp, beside a boulder on the banks of the Rappahannock. While they had been camped here, this was the place he had chosen for early morning visits.

  He sat for a few moments and listened to the music of the river’s currents, which blended with the night chorus of crickets.

  Seamus gazed off in the distance, and there were flickering lights as well on the other side of the river. The evening dalliances of the enemy. But to him, they were not to be feared or hated. They were just men in different uniforms.

  He pulled out his Bible from his inner coat pocket and gripped it between his fingers. Even with the moon at full light, it was too dark for him to read, but Seamus sought out words of consolation nonetheless.

  “For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.”

  Yes. The words will come. But that wasn’t it. There was something else. What passage could he share? Stonewall Jackson was a man of God, a passionate reader of the Bible. What better language could he use to defend himself?

  Seamus felt pressed. Surely he needed to get going. He certainly couldn’t be late for a meeting with one of the most powerful men of the South.